And there is so much yet to tell of the First Black Crusade, with its years of protracted war against the increasing tides of Imperial resistance.
There are those among the Legions that regard the devastating conflict as an unmitigated victory, and there are those that see nothing but harrowing loss in the defeats they sustained.
The truth, as ever, is in the grey that exists between the black and the white. We did not call it a crusade. To us, it was the opening campaign of the Long War, and even that suggests a level of organisation that could scarcely exist. There was no overall conflict to judge. It broke down into a hundred wars between individual fleets and warbands rampaging their way through the segmentum. Warlords from the Nine Legions sought their own glory; champions shed blood and raided slaves and offered sacrifices in the myriad names of the Pantheon they either willingly served or courted for favour.
Cadia was no fortress world in that era, and lacked the defences it boasted in the millennia since, but the Imperium rose against us with inevitability if not alacrity, and we were forced into a protracted war that devastated both sides. The Black Templars and the Imperial Fists led the war – the vengeance they inflicted upon us wove scars across flesh, armour and pride that some of us bear to this day, nine thousand years later.
Soon I will speak of Uralan. Soon I will relate all that transpired in the Tower of Silence, where Abaddon claimed the daemon blade Drach’nyen, that weapon of lies and broken promises. We had to fight for years to reach Uralan, and then we had fight our way through the many madnesses that infested the spire itself.
It is but one story in the Black Crusade that unfolded.
But if we must pause our interrogation here, then allow me to speak of one final matter. It will grant you a greater understanding of my Legion – its noble savagery and its dark codes of honour – and perhaps offer insight into the prisoner you see bound before you now. This was something we shared with all humanity, but I suspect even your Inquisitorial masters may not know it ever happened.
Let me tell you, Siroca, of how we truly declared the Long War.
It was not with the anger of the Vengeful Spirit’s guns, nor with the garbled, shrieking vox-transmissions of burning ships and falling outposts. No, I speak of the formal declaration, unknown even among the Nine Legions but for the Ezekarion that gathered at Abaddon’s side.
You see, even in our vaunted malignancy, we still observed the formalities. War must be declared.
Sigismund was chosen for this responsibility. It felt right that he should carry our words back to the Imperium, back to the Throneworld itself, and it was a solemn conclave that gathered around his corpse.
One of the Black Templars ships served as Sigismund’s mausoleum. I was one of the four warriors that had carried him there, a pallbearer for our first Imperial foe. We had laid him upon one of the command tables in readiness.
Abaddon handed me Sigismund’s blade – not the Sword of the High Marshals, for that was gone in the hands of the surviving Black Templars, but Sigismund’s favoured blade, the Black Sword that had ripped through Abaddon’s own armour. My lord bade me carve our declaration along the length of the blade, and I did so with the point of my ritual jamdhara dagger and the acetylene kiss of psychic fire.
Once it was done, we lay the cooling blade upon Sigismund’s corpse and closed his hands around its hilt. No effort was made to hide the wound that had slain him, nor to mask the mangled ceramite and bloodstained mess of his tabard. The knight-king’s chin was bathed with bloodfall as well – Abaddon wiped the worst of it from the old warrior’s bearded features with a care that would astonish any Imperial witness.
Abaddon touched the slash across his own face, a mark left by Sigismund’s blade, a mark that Abaddon would carry with him down the many centuries to come. He keeps that scar to this day, a reminder of one of the worthiest foes we ever fought and the moment the Great Crusade truly came to an end.
The ship we chose was the light destroyer Valorous Vow, a name I found almost saccharine, but one I had to confess was at least apt. We crewed it with servitors and sacrificial slaves, and ensured its databanks were spooled with all available data of the First Battle of Cadia, from our emergence from the Eye to the breaking of the Black Templars, even down to helm-feed imagery of Abaddon’s wounding and Sigismund’s death. We held nothing back, pouring in all of the objective, wordless data and hololithic recordings for the Valorous Vow to carry back to Terra.
From the bridge of the Vengeful Spirit we watched the small, swift vessel turn away from the fleet and tear a hole in reality, before plunging into the warp on its long journey home. The distress beacons we had lit aboard her suddenly fell silent, as did the repeating loop of its active transponder. It would declare its name, and its burden, until its destruction. As we watched it vanish, sucked into the miasmic puncture in the universe, we hoped it would make it to its destination.
We would learn many, many years later that the Valorous Vow did indeed reach Terra. The message we sent was delivered to the High Lords themselves, though there is no telling how many heard it beforehand, and what they made of the Valorous Vow’s appearance.
In my own imaginings, I like to picture the High Lords’ lackeys boarding the ship in Terra’s vessel-choked orbit, and moving chamber by chamber, corridor by corridor, every step closer towards revelation. Surely they killed the servitors and thralls we left aboard as crew. So be it. I shed no tears over their fate.
But what did those first Imperial souls think, when they looked over the carcasses strewn across the command deck, as their weapon barrels cooled and their chainswords idled? What passed through their minds as they approached Sigismund’s funereal form, rotting in his armour, yet honoured by those that had slain him?
And what did the High Lords themselves make of our declaration? Did one of them cradle the first Black Sword in her hands? Did one of them touch my inscription with his bare fingers? Did they return Sigismund to his bloodied Chapter, or does he lie on Terra, entombed on the same world as the Emperor he so ardently served? Did they stare in disbelief at the data recorded in the Valorous Vow’s archives?
And if they gave credence to the footage and the hololithic spools, did they feel any sorrow or regret at not trusting Sigismund in life, when they had believed us dead and gone, leaving him as the only sentinel out there beneath the Eye’s light?
The message Abaddon commanded me to sear into the Black Sword’s steel was not long. You might think it would be a boast, the petty glorification of one warlord over another, or a spiteful threat in the wake of our freedom.
It was no such thing. The message was a mere three words. I burned them into the Black Sword with an artisan’s care, feeling the weight of history upon my shoulders as I worked.
And in my mind’s eye, I can see the High Lords of that dim and almost-forgotten age – their naked eyes narrowing, their bionic replacement lenses rotating and half-sealing, as they too felt the pressure of history shroud them at the sight of the three words I had carved.
You know what those words were, do you not, Inquisitor Siroca? Is that a smile I hear in the faint wetness of your moving mouth? Why, I believe it is.
With those three words we declared the Long War. Words that would, in time, rise from our throats as the battle cry of the Black Legion. Words that encapsulated all that we had been, and all that we had become.
We are returned.
About the Author
Aaron Dembski-Bowden is the author of the Horus Heresy novels The Master of Mankind, Betrayer and The First Heretic, as well as the novella Aurelian and the audio drama Butcher’s Nails, for the same series. He has also written the popular Night Lords series, the Space Marine Battles book Helsreach, the novels The Talon of Horus and Black Legion, the Grey Knights novel The Emperor’s Gift and numerous short stories. He lives and works in Northern Ireland.
An extract from Night
Lords: The Omnibus.
It was a curse, to be a god’s son.
To see as a god saw, to know what a god knew. This sight, this knowledge, tore him apart time and again.
His chamber was a cell, devoid of comfort, serving as nothing more than a haven against interference. Within this hateful sanctuary, the god’s son screamed out secrets of a future yet to come, his voice a strangled chorus of cries rendered toneless and metallic by the speaker grille of his ancient battle helm.
Sometimes his muscles would lock, slabs of meat and sinew tensing around his iron-hard bones, leaving him shivering and breathing in harsh rasps, unable to control his own body. These seizures could last for hours, each beat of his two hearts firing his nerves with agony as the blood hammered through his cramping muscles. In the times he was free from the accursed paralysis, when his reserve heart would slow and grow still once again, he would ease the pain by pounding his skull against the walls of his cell. This fresh torment was a distraction from the images that burned behind his eyes.
It sometimes worked, but never for long. The returning visions would peel back any lesser torment, bathing his mind once more in fire.
The god’s son, still in his battle armour, rammed his helmed head against the wall, driving his skull against the steel again and again. Between the ceramite helmet he wore and the enhanced bone of his skeleton, his efforts did more damage to the wall than to himself.
Lost in the same curse that led to his gene-father’s death, the god’s son did not see his cell walls around him, nor did he detect the data streaming across his retinas as his helm’s combat display tracked and targeted the contours of the wall, the hinges of the barred door, and every other insignificant detail in the unfurnished chamber. At the top left of his visor display, his vital signs were charted in a scrolling readout that flashed with intermittent warnings when his twin hearts pounded too hard for even his inhuman physiology, or his breathing ceased for minutes at a time with his body locked in a seizure.
And this was the price he paid for being like his father. This was existence as the living legacy of a god.
The slave listened at his master’s door, counting the minutes.
Behind the reinforced dark metal portal, the master’s cries had finally subsided – at least for now. The slave was human, with the limited senses such a state entailed, but with his ear pressed to the door, he could make out the master’s breathing. It was a sawing sound, ragged and harsh, filtered into a metallic growl by the vox-speakers of the master’s skull-faced helm.
And still, even as his mind wandered to other thoughts, the slave kept counting the seconds as they became minutes. It was easy; he’d trained to make it instinctive, for no chronometers would work reliably within the warp.
The slave’s name was Septimus, because he was the seventh. Six slaves had come before him in service to the master, and those six were no longer among the crew of the glorious vessel, the Covenant of Blood.
The corridors of the Astartes strike cruiser stood almost empty, a silent web of black steel and dark iron. These were the veins of the great ship, once thriving with activity: servitors trundling about their simple duties, Astartes moving from chamber to chamber, mortal crew performing the myriad functions that were necessary for the ship’s continued running. In the days before the great betrayal, thousands of souls had called the Covenant home, including almost three hundred of the immortal Astartes.
Time had changed that. Time, and the wars it brought.
The corridors were unlit, but not powerless. An intentional blackness settled within the strike cruiser, a darkness so deep it was bred into the ship’s steel bones. It was utterly natural to the Night Lords, each one born of the same sunless world. To the few crew that dwelled in the Covenant’s innards, the darkness was – at first – an uncomfortable presence. Acclimatisation would inevitably come to most. They would still carry their torches and optical enhancers, for they were human and had no ability to pierce the artificial night as their masters did. But over time, they grew to take comfort in the darkness.
In time, acclimatisation became familiarity. Those whose minds never found comfort in the blackness were lost to madness, and discarded after they were slain for their failure. The others abided, and grew familiar with their unseen surroundings.
Septimus’s thoughts went deeper than most. All machines had souls. This he knew, even from his days of loyalty to the Golden Throne. He would speak with the nothingness sometimes, knowing the blackness was an entity unto itself, an expression of the ship’s sentience. To walk through the pitch-blackness that saturated the ship was to live within the vessel’s soul, to breathe in the palpable aura of the Covenant’s traitorous malevolence.
The darkness never answered, but he took comfort in the vessel’s presence around him. As a child, he’d always feared the dark. That fear had never really left him, and knowing the silent, black corridors were not hostile was all that kept his mind together in the infinite night of his existence.
He was also lonely. That was a difficult truth to admit, even to himself. Far easier to sit in the darkness, speaking to the ship, even knowing it would never answer. He had sometimes felt distant from the other slaves and servants aboard the vessel. Most had been in service to the Night Lords much longer than he had. They unnerved him. Many walked around with their eyes closed, navigating the cold hallways of the ship by memory, by touch, and by other senses Septimus had no desire to understand.
Once, in the silent weeks before another battle on another world, Septimus had asked what became of the six slaves before him. The master was in seclusion, away from his brothers, praying to the souls of his weapons and armour. He had looked at Septimus then, staring with eyes as black as the space between the stars.
And he’d smiled. The master rarely did that. The blue veins visible under the master’s pale cheeks twisted like faint cracks in pristine marble.
‘Primus,’ he spoke softly – as he always did without his battle helm – but with a rich, deep resonance nevertheless, ‘was killed a long, long time ago. In battle.’
‘Did you try to save him, lord?’
‘No. I was not aware of his death. I was not on board the Covenant when it happened.’
The slave wanted to ask if the master would have even tried to save his predecessor had the chance arisen, but in truth he feared he knew the answer already. ‘I see,’ Septimus said, licking his dry lips. ‘And the others?’
‘Tertius… changed. The warp changed him. I destroyed him when he was no longer himself.’
This surprised Septimus. The master had told him before of the importance of servants that could resist the madness of the warp, remaining pure from the corruption of the Ruinous Powers.
‘He fell by your hand?’ Septimus asked.
‘He did. It was a mercy.’
‘I see. And the others?’
‘They aged. They died. All except for Secondus and Quintus.’
‘What of them?’
‘Quintus was slain by the Exalted.’
Septimus’s blood ran cold at those words. He loathed the Exalted.
‘Why? What transgression was he guilty of?’
‘He broke no law. The Exalted killed him in a moment of fury. He vented his rage on the closest living being. Unfortunately for Quintus, it was him.’
‘And… what of Secondus?’
‘I will tell you of the second another time. Why do you ask about my former servants?’
Septimus drew breath to tell the truth, to confess his fears, to admit he was speaking into the ship’s darkness to stave off loneliness. But the fate of Tertius stayed trapped within his forethoughts. Death because of madness. Death because of corruption.
‘Curiosity,’ the slave said to his master, speaking the first and only lie he would ever say in his service.
The sound of booted footfalls drew Se
ptimus back to the present. He moved away from the master’s door, taking a breath as he glanced unseeing down the hallway in the direction of the approaching footsteps.
He knew who was coming. They would see him. They would see him even if he stayed hidden nearby, so there was no sense running. They would smell his scent and see the aura of his body heat. So he stood ready, willing his heartbeat to slow from its thunderous refrain. They would hear that, too. They would smile at his fears.
Septimus clicked the deactivation button on his weak lamp pack, killing the dim yellow illumination and bathing the corridor in utter blackness once more. He did this out of respect to the approaching Astartes, and because he had no wish to see their faces. At times, the darkness made dealing with the demigods much easier.
Steeled and prepared, Septimus closed his now-useless eyes, shifting his perceptions to focus entirely on his hearing and sense of smell. The footfalls were heavy but unarmoured – too widely spaced to be human. A swish of a tunic or robe. Most pervasive of all, the scent of blood: tangy, rich and metallic, strong enough to tickle the tongue. It was the smell of the ship itself, but distilled, purified, magnified.
Another demigod.
One of the master’s kin was coming to see his brother.
‘Septimus,’ said the voice from the blackness.
The slave swallowed hard, not trusting his voice but knowing he must speak. ‘Yes, lord. It is I.’
A rustle of clothing, the sound of something soft on metal. Was the demigod stroking the master’s door?
‘Septimus,’ the other demigod repeated. His voice was inhumanly low, a rumble of syllables. ‘How has my brother been?’
‘He has not emerged yet, lord.’
‘I know. I hear him breathing. He is calmer than before.’ The demigod sounded contemplative. ‘I did not ask if he had emerged, Septimus. I asked how he had been.’
‘This affliction has lasted longer than most, lord, but my master has been silent for almost an hour now. I have counted the minutes. This is the longest he has been at peace since the affliction first took hold.’
Black Legion Page 30
